Barack Obama

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“If this was a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it,” Romney’s campaign spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, gleefully declared in the spin room after the first Romney-Obama debate in October 2012. Obama had appeared tired, irritated, on the defensive. The New York Times noted his “flat, uninspired” performance. Even diehard Obama fan Andrew Sullivan tweeted, “He’s boring, abstract, and”—cue the ultimate zinger—“less human-seeming than Romney.” But it was James Carville who finally put a finger on it: “It looked like President Obama didn’t really want to be there!”

The first Romney debate was a significant waypoint in Obama’s slow drift from ebullient optimist to cranky, deflated cynic, sparking speculation that he might just be over being president. Republicans from Chris Christie (“I don’t think he likes being president”) to Donald Trump (“He’s just not into it”) made note. So did the liberal media, perhaps feeling betrayed by the vanishing act of their heretofore cheerleader in chief. Salon asked in a headline, “Does Obama just hate his job?” *Harper’*s Kevin Baker reminded readers, “Barack Obama has repeatedly informed us that he hates living in the White House and can’t wait to be an ex-president.”

But Obama, an indefatigable basketball fan, soon turned it around and flashed his competitive side. He roundly beat Romney in the second and third debates, before soaring through November and concluding one of the most quietly accomplished portfolios of any president in the modern era: auto-industry bailout, Wall Street reforms, new fuel-efficiency standards, increased aid to veterans, expanded F.D.A. food-safety oversight, gay marriage, getting private lenders out of the federal student-loan program, the Iran deal, and of course, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. Not to mention ending the war in Iraq and drawing down our presence in Afghanistan.

So what’s next for the Obamas? “All the strands of my life came together, and I really became a man when I moved to Chicago,” Obama said in May 2015, announcing Chicago as the future home of his presidential library and leading to speculation that the departing First Family will resettle in the Windy City. Others had predicted Hawaii, Obama’s home state, as nice a place as any to unwind. Finally, in March, Obama put an end to the guessing game: the family will remain in Washington at least until youngest daughter Sasha graduates from high school in 2019. Wherever they end up, Obama will be hitting the phones: he’s raised just $5.4 million of the projected $1 billion cost of his 21st-century “digital-first” library and its endowment.

And what of the first lady’s post–White House plans? Despite media speculation about a possible future in politics, “There are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and Michelle is not running for president,” Barack recently declared. Wherever they are, the windows are likely to be open. “We can’t do little things like open the windows,” the First Lady told Ellen Degeneres about life in the “prison-like” White House. “I haven’t been in a car with the window open for, like, seven years.”